Not getting what you want from your outreach emails? Follow these 10 steps.

Point is, we rely heavily on emails to try to convince others to do something for us. Unfortunately, someone’s inbox isn’t always the most persuasive channel. Researchers at Northwestern University School of Law found that online communication like emails has a limiting effect on persuasion. But don’t panic! In this post, I’ll walk you through 10 easy tricks that will help you overcome common obstacles – like how to spark interest and motivate action – in order to get your content from the bottom of someone’s inbox to their front page. 1. Identify targets with high engagement that already promote similar content This is one of the most time-consuming parts of the outreach process, but trust me, the effort is worth it. The key to ensure a high ROI from your outreach efforts is to target high-quality influencers within your specific vertical. Below are two ways to determine whether or not a target is worth pursuing: Use social media to search keywords related to your content. This is pretty self-explanatory. By searching for relevant keywords on social, you’ll be able to identify publishers that have the largest built-in audiences. For example, if I am promoting a project on personal spending habits, a simple “finance” search on Twitter provides me with a number of top-tier publishers that would make great targets (see below). Use the “influencers” tab on BuzzSumo. This provides a more detailed look at both the publishers and specific individuals who are posting content around your keyword. Using the “finance”…